What To Do When Your Paypal Account Is Limited, How To Remove Limitation And Get Your Money Back

Updated on August 26, 2011

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Paypal
If you use Paypal,
chances are that at some point your account will become limited. In
some cases this problem can be solved, however in many cases your
account will be permanently limited,
therefore unusable. Any funds in your account at the time it becomes
limited will be held by Paypal,
and you will not be able to withdraw these funds until you resolve the
limitation. There are things you can do to work around this, and in this
article I will explain a few ways you can resolve a limitation or recover funds from a limited account.

Resolving A Limitation Depending on the type of limitation, and what kind of information Paypal is asking for, it may or may not be worth your time to even attempt to have the limitation removed. In some cases they may only ask for a utility bill, credit card statement, ID or other paperwork. This is easy if you have these documents on hand, if you don't have the correct documents, you can use Photoshop to generate the necessary documents. You can read our tutorial: "How To Use Photoshop To Make Fake ID". It is illegal to create false images of your government issued ID, so I will not recommend that you do that! If they want you to verify a credit card and you don't want to use your own, you can use a virtual credit card. There are many websites offering virtual credit cards, I find the "Aspkin Forum" to be the most reliable. If you fail in removing the limitation you will have to look at other options. Paypal 180 Day Hold After a failed appeal, paypal will hold the funds in your account for a period of 180 days (6 months). Yes, they will hold your money, and undoubtedly invest it and earn interest on it for half a year. After the 180 days period is up, they will send you an email saying that your funds are eligible for withdrawal. If you are waiting for a significant amount of money held in your limited paypal account, you will want to try to keep the bank account attached to this account active and open. If your bank account is no longer active, they will in most cases allow you to add another bank account and withdraw the funds. There are more and more reports of Paypal not releasing these funds after the 180 day hold period, so you should look at it as a probability that you will recover these funds, not a guarantee. This being considered, you may want to look at alternative options to recover your money.

How To Handle Your Customers Once your account becomes limited, I would suggest you refund all orders that have not yet been sent, because there is no guarantee that you will ever recover the money. You can contact your buyers and explain to them what has happened, and let them know that if they still want the product, they can make arrangements to pay using another method. If you have any transactions in the past month with buyers that you know well enough to trust, you may want to contact them and ask them if they can help you out. You may be able to convince them to accept a refund from your limited paypal account and then send you the money with an alternative payment method.

Starting Over If you intend to continue selling products online and using paypal to accept payments, you will need to set up a new paypal account using different information. You can read our article: "Step By Step Instructions On How To Get A New Paypal Account". In order to protect yourself from future disruptions to your online business, you should probably also have several backup accounts as well. Also you will want to examine the cause of the original problem, how did you become limited, and try to avoid it in the future. It is impossible to avoid a limitation forever, but there are steps you can take to minimize the risk. For example, use only your home computer and use a separate windows user account on your desktop for each Paypal/eBay account. Start selling slowly, avoid selling high price items until your account has matured. Never use a free Wifi connection, and always use a router that will give you a unique IP each time you sign on and off. Do Your Homework Everything you need to know is detailed in the Aspkin.com eBay And Paypal Limited Forum. You can feel free to chat with the forum members and ask questions in order to learn more. If you are interested in Amazon they also deal with issues for Amazon as well. You may or may not decide to buy the book "EBAY STEALTH", I do believe it is well worth the price, however everything in the book is available for free in the forum.

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Comments 16 comments

PayPal really is a great platform for making and receiving payments online. I agree with you that people need to do their homework before using the account and the tip about the forum at aspkin.com is really solid information.

thebestyou 4 years ago

Paypal is evil. Read my page on them. Something needs to be done to shut them down

Yoshi 4 years ago

I love Paypal. I can get away with so much with them. I have over 20 paypal's attached to 20 Ebay's. I withdraw to 20 real bank accounts. I love paypal.

jerseys4kids.com 4 years ago from Vancouver / Bangkok Author

good for you Yoshi .. all the best!

Yoshi 4 years ago

Don't get me wrong, I do get banned from Paypal from time to time but why call them when in that time I can open 3 more paypal's and ebays and be up and running again. Stealth accounts all the way baby.

TravelinAsia 4 years ago from Thailand/Southeast Asia

Yes .. well, if Paypal played fair, then people like you wouldn't need to cheat the system, isn't that right?

Karthic 4 years ago

My account has been limited only for using different virtual credit cards. While banks in my country(India) says that using different VCCs at different transactions is safe, paypal limited my account permanently. I tried to explain it to the paypal customer care, customer rep. said he will take limit from my account but immediately changed his mind and said he can't. Crap!

Tamade 4 years ago

I'd just buy small things from ebay, and big things from Amazon, Newegg, etc...it is one way to avoid reaching limits too quickly. It is a minor annoyance but I found Amazon quite competitive for my need. Amazon started selling many nuts and bolts, etc.

I think at the end, the owner of paypal will have to make a decision... with some number crunching, see if it is worth losing the frequent buyers who buy many things, or making the percentage difference from not using the credit card.

David 4 years ago

Can I change account information once a PayPal account has been permanently limited? When I created the account, I put my own name and SSN because I was the person controlling the account. However, the actual business owner's name and SSN is different (he is my boss). I know it was dumb of me to use my own info, but I honestly didn't know any better. Can I still change this information? I don't want to get into trouble for providing wrong information.

Connor 3 years ago

I have a paypal account that has been recently limited, i have no funds in this account so is it worth putting in all the details or shall i just create a new account + can the do anything if i dont respond to the limit, thanks

rumintasari 3 years ago from Sleman

hahaha.. I like your image mate.

Rebecca Savastio 3 years ago

Five years ago I opened a Paypal account to help a neighbor who had been the victim of racist vandals who slashed their tires and scratched the "N" word into the side of their van. I canvassed my neighborhood in the boiling heat raising money for them and sent out emails to friends and family, asking them to send donations to the new Paypal account I had opened for the purpose of helping my neighbors repair their van. Since the Paypal account had the name "Bailey Fund" on it and I had selected "non profit" (this was SUCH a stupid thing to do!) they began asking me for reams of documentation that I was a non-profit organization. I never intended to become a non-profit organization at all, I was simply trying to help my neighbor. I called Paypal and explained, but they said nothing could be done but to file a dispute. They said they would get back to me. Well, I never heard back from them, and now it is five years later and I have not used the account since then. My new online employer just sent my first paycheck to the email associated with that account. I don't know why they did this; I had sent them my husband's account email but they used my email. I logged in to my account and see no payment and a big "limited" notice, and again they are asking me for tons of documents. I am not a non-profit. I raised $800 five years ago, all of which went to my neighbor. Now I am so upset I am practically in tears thinking I am never going to get my money. It's criminal! I guess I will call them again but they were so unhelpful the first time. I am so upset I can't even explain. No good deed goes unpunished!